


Anxiety Dreams

by InfaWrit10



Category: Sanders Sides
Genre: Anxiety dreams and what causes them, Familial Fluff, hint: it’s Virgil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 09:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25967389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfaWrit10/pseuds/InfaWrit10
Summary: A series of unrelated one-shots that delves into the theoretical provocation of an anxiety dream within Thomas.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Kudos: 3





	Anxiety Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! Back again with another round of Sanders Sides fics!
> 
> This one-shot explored what is considered an “anxiety dream.” Can Virgil have dreams that aren’t anxiety dreams? Or are all his dreams anxiety dreams regardless of their content? Is it a development of his recently improved outlook since his acceptance?
> 
> Not gonna lie, this isn’t the best, but I do like it. Also, trigger warning for nightmares and very very slight bodily harm (done to humanoid creepypasta-looking creatures).
> 
> Enjoy!

Virgil stretched and yawned himself down the stairs that morning.

“Morning, Virge!” Patton chirped.

Roman looked up, too, at the unfamiliar sight of Virgil padding down the stairs before noon.

“Ah, so the storm cloud  _ can _ get up early,” the prince mused. “I didn’t think you could feasibly survive the sun’s morning rays.”

Virgil would kick himself later for his lack of a comment about  _ Princey’s _ morning routine that so often included getting ready for three hours  _ at least. _ Seeing as staircase wit failed him in that particular instance, he greeted him instead with a lazy, but accusatory finger. “I might be a vampire, but that is a filthy stereotype, and you should be ashamed of yourself.” With that, he pulled out a chair and plopped down into it. To make up for dropping the ball seconds earlier, his brain provided him with, “Besides, how do you think storm clouds get silver linings?”

“Oh, that’s cute!” A voice piped from the toaster. He sped over and ruffled Virgil’s bed head affectionately, which received a sleepy snort. “Want me to get you something while I’m up?” Patton asked.

Virgil shook his head. “Nah, still kinda half-asleep. Thanks though.”

With a hand on the back of Virgil’s chair, Patton lifted his head. “What about you, Roman?”

“I’m fine for now, padre, thank you.”

Patton gave a firm nod with an accompanying “hm!” before rounding the table and lightly ruffling Roman’s waves on his way by, as well. Though Roman seriously muttered, “Watch the hair,” there was a slight smile on his face that didn’t slip past Virgil’s notice. After a fond shake of his head, Roman resumed scribbling something in a notebook—probably working on some sonnet, or video ideas.

“Oh,” Virgil said after he’d woken up a tiny bit. “Roman, you’ll appreciate this.”

The creative side perked up shutting his notebook courteously. “Do tell, Gerard Gay.”

“Nice.”

“I pay attention.” Roman smirked.

Virgil dropped his hands on the table. “I defeated a foul beast in my dream last night.”

“Did you really?” Roman asked, genuinely interested. He always loved hearing about when the other sides had dreams. Since he didn’t technically control what they dreamed about—“It’s a whole big thing where I kind of  _ indirectly _ do, but I also  _ don’t,  _ and there’s a tree with like, flowers and a really important branch involved, and it’s all a big hullabaloo about essentially nothing so let’s just move on.”—he always listened carefully, hoping to maybe take some inspiration from it.

“Ho yeah,” Virgil continued. “It was an anxiety dream, too, which is  _ really  _ weird.”

Roman laced his fingers together and leaned further into the table. “Right, anxiety dreams don’t behave like sweet dreams do.”

Virgil nodded. “Yeah, you feel… hopeless, petrified. Rarely ever do they have any silver linings, let alone any sort of a happy ending. This might actually be the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that.”

“Well, did you feel relief afterward?” Patton asked, setting three glasses of orange juice on the table. Roman thanked Patton quietly so as to not interrupt. “Like, when the monster was gone, did you feel calm?” 

Virgil didn’t answer immediately. “Patton, you didn’t have to do that,” he stated with—dare he admit it—a grateful little smile, referring to the juice.

The father figure merely beamed at him. “You looked a little tired, and the brightness in orange juice is a good substitute for caffeine. Still wakes you up, but it’s better for you!”

Virgil squinted his eyes a bit. “You really are a dad, huh?”

“Answer Dad’s question!” Roman demanded impatiently. “I’m curious.”

Virgil held up his hands. “Alright, alright. Um… Well, I didn’t wake up screaming or flailing around in bed or anything, so… Maybe?”

“You can’t tell what calm is?” Roman asked, eyes narrowed and entirely confused.

“Roman, be nice!” Patton insisted.

While Virgil rolled his eyes, Roman tried to defend himself—“I was asking a serious question! I didn’t mean for it to be—!”

“You’re good, Roman,” Virgil affirmed, establishing reassuring eye contact with him before he continued. “Anyway, I can't really remember if I felt calm or not. Honestly, all I remember was feeling—like, cool. Like I’d accomplished something.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like an anxiety dream at all,” Patton observed confusedly.

Roman, looking pensive, hummed. “Agreed. Are you sure you didn’t mistake a rush of adrenaline for perhaps a shred of, dare I say it, confidence?”

Virgil’s hands wound around the mug in front of him. “All my dreams are anxiety dreams,” he answered definitively, then gestured lazily at himself. “I am Anxiety, after all.”

“Well, that’s not all that you are, remember,” Patton pointed out. “You’re also a protector for Thomas. Maybe slaying the beast was a manifestation of  _ that _ part of you.”

Virgil’s gaze slid back down to his drink, eyebrows knit together, his mouth slightly agape as he thought it over.

Roman turned to Patton, but continued to eye Virgil studiously as he spoke. “While that was… actually really smart of you, Patton… I kind of  _ really _ wanna hear about our resident Nervous Nelly slaying some evil creature.”

Virgil perked up at the sound of ‘nervous,’ then smirked. “With pleasure.”

He shifted forward in his seat, suddenly sharper in focus with a spark of excitement.

“So this thing was like… one-a those kinds of monsters where like, if it was walking far behind you, and you turn around and turn back, it’d be right behind you.”

“Oh, those are annoying,” Roman groaned. “If you want me for something, fight me! Don’t just hang back in the name of suspense, like, what purpose does that serve?”

“Roman, you can’t tell me that if you were a monster that you wouldn't be the exact same way,” Virgil claimed.

“And what makes you think I’d be so cowardly, huh, Stormy Nicks?” Roman challenged with a sassy bobble of his head.

“You love dramatic tension and getting reactions out of people,” Virgil explained. “That’s  _ that  _ kind of monster.”

Roman’s mouth worked wordlessly, unable to dispute that, but fully ready to.

Virgil shrugged. “But if it makes you feel any better—as you said—it does create suspense, and suspense is unarguably the best kind of horror.”

“But jump scares are cheap,” Roman countered. “And that’s what those monsters most commonly do, no?”

“Well, yeah, there’s that. Still fits, though,” Virgil argued lackadaisically.

“How?! I’m not  _ cheap. _ I’m a prince! If I were a real person, my net worth would be above all of yours!” Roman declared offendedly.

With a questioning raise of his eyebrow and a wry grimace, Virgil asked, “Then why’d you add ‘Cheap Queen’ to your Side Tracks, something that was supposed to describe  _ you?” _

Instead of defending himself, Roman perked up, his annoyance gone in a snap. “You… looked at my songs?”

Nonchalantly, Virgil shrugged. In truth, he’d listened to everyone’s out of curiosity, but no one needed to know that. “I skimmed. Nice adding Jukebox the Ghost and Gorillaz on there, by the way. Good choices.”

“Yeah, I really liked your playlist, Roman! Really fun!” Patton complimented.

Thank goodness red was Roman’s color; it didn’t look so abnormal coloring his face that way. “Uh… thank you, you two.” Abruptly, he cleared his throat. “Now, stop stalling, dark and stormy knight! Regale us with how you defeated this foe.”

Virgil smirked. While Roman was definitely The Storyteller, and no one disputed that, Virgil could tell a mean ghost story. He settled in, shifting in his seat and leaning closer to his audience. “So, it’s dark.” Virgil licked his lips as an excuse for a dramatic pause, then continued, slow and ominous, “I’m in the woods, the trees are nothing but silhouettes around me, and I’m thinking of nothing except getting  _ away  _ from this thing. I haven’t even seen it properly yet, but I just  _ know,  _ whatever it is, it’s going to hurt me.

“I somehow manage to outrun it, and I’m bone-tired. And because dream logic, I wake up in bed. I look up, half-conscious…” Virgil himself looks up, at one of the cabinets above Roman’s head with a dawning sense of terror bubbling in his eyes. “... and this thing is standing in the corner of my room staring at me, watching me sleep.”

“What does it look like?” Roman breathed, enthralled.

“I don’t really know, honestly. It was… hazy, hard to look at or describe. All I remember was that it was vaguely human-shaped. And shadows and fog  _ poured _ off of this thing, like, if I’d looked down, I wouldn’t be surprised to find them pooling on the floor of my room.”

Sitting with his knees to his chest in the chair diagonal from him, Patton whimpered. Virgil glanced at him sympathetically, a silent offer to stop so Patton could leave if he wished.

He made no move to. A small but intrigued voice asked, “What happened next?”

Virgil smiled proudly. Patton facing fear sometimes made him feel that way—rarely, but still. He’s empowered by that now, and whirls back into the story, full-force. His voice is alert, frightened, sharp. “So I move to sit up. I blink once, twice, and it’s right next to my bed, hovering over me. I blink again, then bam! It’s on top of me, and it’s got cold hands—hands that must belong to Death itself—around my throat, suffocating me.” His cadence slows, but he keeps his dreadful intensity, representative of how gradually time is slipping through his dream-self’s fingers as his life flashes before his eyes in a blazing haze of fear. “And just as the world begins to fade, and my face starts to turn an oxygen-less blue… I dug my fingernails as deeply as I could into the wrists of this thing, and with a hellish scream, it burst into a shower of black sand.” Virgil’s ending grin was wicked, smug and mischievous. He leaned against the back of his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle underneath the table. “Then, I woke up… for real this time.”

“Edgy,” Roman commented, amused.

“Scary,” Patton murmured.

“Awesome,” Virgil grinned. “I didn’t scare you too bad, did I, Pat?”

Patton answered him with a twitchy, but genuine grin. “Nope! All good here.”

“Good,” he smiled, pushing out of his chair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Logan asked me last night if I’d kick Thomas out of bed today to get him going on editing and possibly cleaning his mirror for once.”

“Before you go,” Roman called, interrupting his sinking out.

Virgil rose back up and quirked a brow at him.

“You told that well,” he commended with a regal smirk.

Having The Storyteller compliment him on his way of doing things that normally fell into Roman’s domain… That felt nice.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, strangely touched, then sank out.

Maybe his dream hadn’t been an anxiety dream after all, like Patton and Roman had said. Maybe it had been just an errant spike of adrenaline he hadn’t known what to do with. Maybe it was one more sign that things were looking up for him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please leave me a comment or kudos telling me so! I would love to hear from you! Thank you for reading :)


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